Republicans are now committed to Total War – on American democracy

❝ The election is just five days away, and something truly frightening is happening, something with far-reaching implications for the immediate future of American politics. Republicans, led by Donald Trump but by no means limited to him, are engaging in kind of termite-level assault on American democracy, one that looks on the surface as though it’s just aimed at Hillary Clinton, but in fact is undermining our entire system…

Consider these recent developments:

❝ There appears to be a war going on inside the FBI, and from what we can tell, a group of rogue agents, mostly in New York, may be in such a fervor to destroy Hillary Clinton that they may be aggressively leaking damaging innuendo to the press against her in the waning days of the campaign. They succeeded in their apparent goal of making FBI director James Comey a tool of their campaign — and the basis for their investigation is an anti-Clinton book written under the auspices of an organization of which the CEO of the Trump campaign is co-founder and chairman. Pro-Trump FBI agents now seem to be coordinating with Trump surrogates to do maximal possible damage to Clinton…

High-ranking Republican officeholders are now suggesting that they may impeach Clinton as soon as she takes office. These are not just backbench nutbars of the Louie Gohmert variety, but people with genuine power, including Ron Johnson, the senator from Wisconsin, Michael McCaul, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, and veteran legislators like James Sensenbrenner and Peter King. The message is being echoed by top Trump surrogates like Rudy Giuliani…

There is a growing movement among Republicans in the Senate to simply refuse to approve any nominee appointed by a Democratic president to the Supreme Court, leaving open any and all vacancies until a Republican can be elected to fill them.

State and local Republican officials are engaged in widespread and systematic efforts to suppress the votes of African-Americans and other groups likely to vote disproportionately Democratic; in many cases officials have been ordered by courts to stop their suppression efforts and they have simply ignored the court orders.

❝ And please, spare me any explanations for this phenomenon that rely on how “divided” Americans are. Are we divided? Sure. But there’s only one party that is so vigorously undermining core democratic institutions in this way. You may not like what Democrats stand for, but they aren’t engaging in widespread official vote suppression, chanting that should their candidate win her opponent should be tossed in jail, promising to prevent any Republican president from filling vacancies on the Supreme Court, suggesting that they’ll try to impeach their opponent as soon as he takes office, cheering when a hostile foreign power hacks into American electronic systems, and trying to use the FBI to win the election.

Regardless, understand that this election and the ideology dedicated to replacing democracy with autocracy, corporate plutocrats profiting, populist mob rule utilized as a tactic – ain’t new and will continue beyond November 8th.

2 thoughts on “Republicans are now committed to Total War – on American democracy”

Indiana State Police raided a voter registration office in the state earlier this month and confiscated computers, cell phones and other records there as they said they were looking into potential allegations of voter registration fraud by the Indiana Voter Registration Project – which focused on registering African-American voters. As a result 45,000 Black voters are likely to be disenfranchised in the upcoming election. http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/indiana-county-prosecutor-calls-cries-of-voter-fraud-int-he-state-premature
Indiana is not a swing state in the presidential election, but the close Senate contest between Republican Todd Young and Democrat Evan Bayh could determine which party controls the Senate for the next two years. The state is also in the midst of a pitched battle for the governor’s seat, which is being vacated by Donald Trump’s running mate, Mike Pence. The importance of these races has intensified questions about the conduct of the state’s election authorities and police. Why, critics ask, is the state launching an investigation weeks before a major election, without sharing proof that fraud has taken place? http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/11/indiana-african-american-voters-james-comey-fbi